This could definitely be a bento lunch, in fact the recipe came from "The Just Bento Cookbook", but we had it for a Saturday brunch and it was perfect. The following amounts serve two people. For a vegetarian version just leave the salmon out from the salad.
First of all, get your rice on to cook (instructions for perfect short-grain rice are here) and toast up some sesame seeds. Also immerse some wakame seaweed in cold water to rehydrate.
Now mix 4 eggs, 4 tsp sugar, 2 tsp sake, 4 tsp corn flour and a large pinch of salt together in a bowl with a fork. Heat up a small frying pan over a low heat and wipe it with oil, when it's hot pour in a small amount of the egg mixture - about a quarter. Keep these omelettes fairly thin.
When the egg has set, flip the omelette over and cook for a minute on the other side before turning out onto a plate. Repeat until you have at least 4 omelettes, but you'll probably get 5 which means one to eat hot right out of the pan!
When your rice is done, turn it out into a glass bowl with a tbsp of rice vinegar. Fan the rice with one hand while turning and stirring it and the vinegar with a spatula in the other. The rice should go very sticky. Add the toasted sesame seeds and mix through, then leave to one side to cool down.
The salad is very easy to put together. Peel a cucumber and rub salt into the surface, massage it for a few minutes over the sink to firm up the flesh and season it. Then slice it into half moons.
Mix the cucumber with the drained seaweed and the smoked salmon, if using. Whisk up a splash of rice vinegar, a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, a pinch of sugar, black pepper and some shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) to taste.
When the seasoned sesame rice is relatively cool, place a large spoonful in the center of each omelette and fold around into a square. Lay down with the folds on the bottom and sprinkle over some furikake or pickled ginger. Serve with the salad.
I fancied something a little different to your usual brunch this morning. I didn't fancy bacon or sausages, which I have other plans for anyway, but I did want something salty and sweet and altogether more vitimin laden than meat.
I made this up but the inspiration for it came from a recipe in Harumi Kurihara's book, Japanese Home Cooking. Mine is virtually unrecognisable from the original, but still very tasty.
I pulled out a load of green and white vegetables from the fridge: broccoli, a pepper, celery, broad beans, onion and mushrooms. I stir fried these in a hot pan, adding a small amount of chicken stock (if vegetarian, use vegetable stock) and a tiny drizzle of light soy sauce. When cooked I put the omelette filling into a baking tray and popped it into the oven on its lowest setting to stay warm.
I washed a cup of short grain rice and popped it into a small saucepan with cold water up to about an inch over the rice and a few drops of toasted sesame oil. Put on a fairly high heat with a lid on until it came to the boil, then turned down and simmered for 14 minutes. It needs to rest for five minutes off the heat after that or the texture will be squishy.
Seaweed is fabulous stuff and only takes 10 minutes to prepare. Just pop it in a bowl with cold water and it plumps out as though it never left the ocean. Sqeeze it as dry as you can and then season with a little light soy sauce.
While the rice was cooking, I beat two eggs with a little chicken stock (or use veg stock), salt and pepper and heated up a frying pan until extremely hot. 2 eggs made three very thin little pancake omelettes, cooked quickly and browned on both sides. I put those in the low oven as well, to keep warm.
I turned out the rice with a fork and seasoned it with some mirin and rice wine vinegar, then mixed the seaweed into it. Piled it into little bowls and sprinkled some vegetable furikake over the top.
To assemble the omelettes I just piled the filling in the middle, rolled them up and cut them in half.
